ar
Department, or whether the villany was of his own
conception. If he had acted under orders, why then terrible
measures of fierce retaliation against the whole Yankee
nation were to be adopted; but if, _per contra_, the
iniquity were of his own motion and without the sanction of
our Government, then the foreshadowed retribution should be
made to fall only on Hunter and his officers.

[Illustration: BUILDING ROADS]

"To this demand, with its alternative of threats, President
Lincoln was in no mood to make any definitive reply. In fact
no reply at all was sent, for, as yet, the most far-seeing
political augurs could not determine whether the bird seen
in the sky of the Southern Department would prove an eagle
or a buzzard. Public opinion was not formed upon the
subject, though rapidly forming. There were millions who
agreed with Hunter in believing that 'that the black man
should be made to fight for the freedom which could not but
be the issue of our war;' and then they were outraged at the
prospect of allowing black men to be killed or maimed in
company with our nobler whites.

"Failing to obtain any reply therefor, from the authorities
at Washington, the Richmond people determined to pour out
all their vengeance on the immediate perpetrators of this
last Yankee atrocity; and forthwith there was issued from
the rebel War Department a General Order number 60, we
believe, of the series of 1862--reciting that 'as the
government of the U. S. had refused to answer whether it
authorized the raising of a black regiment by Gen. Hunter or
not' said General, his staff, and all officers under his
command who had directly or indirectly participated in the
unclean thing, should hereafter be outlaws not covered by
the laws of war; but to be executed as felons for the crimes
of 'inciting negro insurrections wherever caught.'

"This order reached the ears of the parties mainly
interested just as Gen. Hunter was called to Washington,
ostensibly for consultation on public business; but really
on the motion of certain prominent speculators in marine
transportation, with those 'big things,' in Port Royal
harbor,--and they were enormous--with which the General had
seen fit to interfere. These frauds, however, will form a
very fruitful